While privilege exists, justice can't be achieved.

How you can get the story right about TIF’s

December 13th, 2014 by Administrator

Civic Lab has a Crowdfunding project to create a series of videos explaining Tax Increment Financing in Chicago. I’m confident they’ll do a good job of describing what’s wrong and why TIF’s, in anything like their current form, are detrimental to sound economic development. I’m a bit concerned about their proposed fifth video: Alternatives to TIFs. Do they understand that the way to prosperity starts by looking at what the proper function of government is, and the proper way to fund government?.

Once we recognize that government should be funded by collection of economic rent, which in a well-run city is largely land rent, we can see that elimination of taxes on productive activity will make all kinds of enterprises viable, quite likely causing a labor shortage which is they key to prosperity for working people. I don’t know that this message will get thru in the video, but the project offers a way to do it.

According to the web site, for $1,000 you’ll get a chance to express your own idea in their video. You could simply say that proper role of government in economic development is to collect the rent, protect the environment, build the infrastructure, operate the natural monopolies, and stay out of the way. Just a thought for prosperous Georgists.